Congress's Apology for Slavery Is a Good Thing—It's Just Not Enough
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Jul 31, 2008
Editor's Note: The House vote to apologize for the horror of slavery, albeit important, is nothing to really laud since many states have already done it. The apology notwithstanding, America has yet to shake its legacy of slavery, writes Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author and political analyst. His new book is "How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back."
The House of Representative's vote to apologize for the horror of slavery was an easy call. Several states have done their mea culpas on slavery. The resolutions the states and Congress passed were mild, innocuous, and ultimately toothless. In truth that's all they were supposed to be. But the House resolution was still important. It was tacit acknowledgement of something that the slavery apology opponents vehemently deny and that is that slavery was not just the evil doings of greedy Southern planters.
The U.S. government encoded slavery in the Constitution and protected and nourished it for a century. Traders, insurance companies, bankers, shippers, and landowners made billions off of it. Their ill-gotten profits fueled America's industrial and agricultural might. For decades after slavery's end, white trade unions excluded blacks and confined them to the dirtiest, poorest paying jobs.
While it's true that many whites and non-white immigrants came to America after the Civil War they were not subjected to the decades of relentless racial terror and legal segregation, as were blacks. Through the decades of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, African-Americans were transformed into the poster group for racial deviancy. The image of blacks as lazy, crime- and violence-prone, irresponsible, and sexual predators has stoked white fears and hostility and served as the standard rationale for more than 4,000 documented lynchings between 1890 and 1945, as well as the countless racial assaults and acts of hate crime violence.
Though some blacks earn more and live better than ever today, and have gotten boosts from welfare, social and education programs, civil rights legislation, and affirmative action programs, that does not mean that America has shaken the hideous legacy of slavery. The National Urban League in its annual State of Black America reports yearly continually finds that young blacks are far likelier than whites to be imprisoned, serve longer terms, and are more likely to receive the death penalty even when their crimes are similar.
Blacks continue to have the highest rates of poverty, infant mortality, violence victimization rates, and health care disparities than any other group in America. They are still more likely to live in segregated neighborhoods and be refused business and home loans. Their children are more likely to attend failed public schools than any other group, and more likely to be racially profiled on America's urban streets.
Also, there is nothing new about state and federal governments issuing apologies and payments for past wrongs committed against African-Americans. The U.S. government admitted it was legally liable in 1997 to pay the black survivors and family members of the two-decade long syphilis experiment begun in the 1930's by the U.S. Public Health Service that turned black patients into human guinea pigs. The survivors got $10 million from the government and an apology from President Clinton. They were the victims of a blatant medical atrocity conducted with the full knowledge and approval of the U.S. government.
The state legislature in Florida in 1994 agreed to make payments to the survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives and property when a white mob destroyed the all-black town of Rosewood in 1923. This was a specific act of mob carnage that was tacitly condoned by some public officials and law enforcement officers. Florida was liable for the violence and was duty bound to apologize and pay. The Oklahoma state legislature has agreed at least in principle that reparations and apology should be made to the survivors of the dozens of blacks killed, and the hundreds more that had their homes and businesses destroyed by white mobs with the complicity of law enforcement in the Tulsa massacre of 1921. There's even a bill by Michigan Congressman John Conyers that has been kicked around Congress since 1989 to establish a commission to study the impact of slavery and the feasibility of paying reparations to blacks.
The Conyer's bill will likely continue to be stillborn in Congress. Reparations is simply too risky, divisive, and distracting for Congress to seriously consider. Both presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain oppose reparations. Obama, however, has spoken vaguely about the need to spend more on education, job and housing programs as the best way to deal with the ills of the black poor. Virginia took a light stab at addressing the needs of the black poor. After it apologized for slavery, it created a scholarship fund for blacks whose schools were closed during the state's massive resistance campaign to integration from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s.
The brutal truth is that a mainstay of America's continuing racial divide is its harsh and continuing mistreatment of poor blacks. This can be directly traced to the persistent and pernicious legacy of slavery. The House's symbolic apology was a good thing, but it's just not enough.
Related Articles:
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Blair Expresses 'Sorrow' for Slavery, Will Bush Follow Suit?
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User Comments
J Davis on Aug 03, 2008 at 08:53:27 said:
I believe that no one who voted for this congress that represents the US people in the year 2008 has every owned slaves. I'm sure (well, pretty sure) none of the members of congress have ever owned slaves. So, what is the need for an appology for something that none of us has ever been involved with?
Additionally, while living in Sierra Leone in 1999, I just wished that the "African Americans" could see what life would have been like had they even survived their own African slavery. Every day on my way to the office I passed by two amputee camps. In Kenema I saw piles of mutilated bodies... Terrible living conditions as well.
By the way, white people should now be called "European American" as we should not be the only race now identified by color in America. It seems every decade we must change what we call black people. In Africa, it's simply black and white.
Enough is enough.
nativessayno on Aug 01, 2008 at 14:49:37 said:
A huge apology that\'s coming... is by way of our next president! This (likely) acendency will move us all forward and it gladdens me immensely.
JRice makes a good point about the starkly accepted contrast regarding the: negative, shameful aspects of jewish history compared to the US legacy of slavery and all of its horror and consequences.
Please see the book: Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. Very inspirational and a glimpse of our recent past. Google "images" to see photos.
We are all in this together, Earl. I celebrate and agree; true justice and true meaningful regret and redress could take us far.
My people\'s (native/indigenous) needs historical and accurate redressing too. ***Don\'t forget us just because we are so few....we are still among you.**
Let\'s set all of this right; as we may---- formally and informally.
Lee on Aug 01, 2008 at 08:30:54 said:
I don\'t understand why current government representatives are apologizing for something in which they had no part. Makes no sense. And why apologize for a practice that nearly every country in the world had at the time it was introduced here by the British against the wishes of the colonists? I think instead America should be celebrated for having gotten rid of the practice of slavery in our nation.
J Rice on Jul 31, 2008 at 11:42:45 said:
M Chambers -- Your grasp of history and its role in shaping global socio economic realities requires more work. Your notions of what constitutes a 'civilized' or 'advanced' society are predictably Eurocentric. Are you confusing guns and money with civilization?
Exactly what clear evidence is available demonstrate that being in America is to be considered a blessing without slaves and without European colonies in the rest of the world? Not to mention without the horrific toll exacted from the Native American people?
To answer your question about what would be enough. (I should note I am not African American myself) The answer is nothing that the American government (this is the government - an institution that is apologizing) can do that would be enough. If your definition of "enough" implies some form of restitution that would balance what was taken away.
Chambers, what exactly is the source of what I'm sure you consider a well informed view of the African "motherland" as not having anything "remotely" resembling a civlized and advanced society?
There is the constant exhortation to "never forget" when it comes to Jewish history and an angry (perhaps fearful?) barrage of "get over it" when it comes to the black community.
June H on Jul 31, 2008 at 10:44:07 said:
When are women going to receive an apology. They were also indentured slaves, starved, beaten in or out of marriages, forced prostitution, forced marriages, couldn\'t inherit family property or money, and many other things including not being able to vote until the 20th Century - 1920!!! These crimes toward humanity have been going on since and before America was even discovered!!
Daniel Henry on Jul 30, 2008 at 23:20:31 said:
I would argue the point myself, but why try to say it yourself when someone else has already said it best.
Go to YouTube, type in "No Apologies for Slavery", and select the first video on the list.
shakir on Jul 30, 2008 at 20:00:45 said:
Thanks for not fighting, but just telling it like it is. Racism is as insidious as cancer and perhaps as incurable. The change in our nation's treatment of blacks won't come because a nearly white socio-economic establishment becomes "enlightened" it's changing because the physical and genetic makeup of this country is becoming "unwhitened."
Ohboy on Jul 30, 2008 at 19:52:37 said:
Chambers -- Americans has been lucky to have Africans in their midst to teach them the meaning of civilization. Reparations is not about the money it's about justice. ANYONE who was wronged in this country deserves justice including the white irish, jews, chinese, filipinos and yes (gasp!) black people. It is a fight that we will continue to pick until that justice is served.
M Chambers on Jul 30, 2008 at 19:36:35 said:
Please Sir, explain to me what would be enough? You see...your letter implies that something along the lines of reparations to the ancestors of slaves would be most apporopriate. If so, I ask what about the White Slaves from Ireland, the so-called indentured servants usually worked to death during th 1500 and 1600's?? Should we pay their ancestors any reparations? And what about out current social Welfare system...is that no a form of reparations since the majority of recipients in this country are of African-american descent? And what about the fact that African-Americans can find no equal in their "motherland" today that even remotely resembles a civilized and advanced society? Should not the opportunity of even existing here in America at all be considered a blessing, or reparations, for the injustice of the past? I recommend you let this go Earl...this is one fight you do not want to pick.
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